Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Once upon a time, when I was still running Pathfinder, I started
picking up third party products. I didn’t allow too many third-party products,
but when I did, it tended to be items that were thematic to the campaign I
wanted to run. One of those products was a supplement from Rite Publishing
called In the Company of Giants.

Rite Publishing did several “In the Company of” products, which
were supplements that allowed players to play monstrous races. These
supplements were inspired by the 3.0 Savage Species book, as well as the racial
paragon classes introduced in the 3.5 version of Unearthed Arcana, but spent a
little bit more time delving into one specific type of creature.

If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I have a
weakness for giants. I have no idea where this comes from, but I love the huge
sacks of hit points. Despite this, I never ran a campaign where I allowed the
material from In the Company of Giants.

The Pathfinder version of the supplement allowed you to play a
Jotunnar, a giant-kin race that had the option to take levels in a racial
paragon class. They either took this class at 1st level and only
advanced as a Jotun Paragon, or they stayed one of “the stunted.”

The Jotun Paragon would pick an element, and various giant styled
powers were grouped under the elemental types. For example, an Earth Jotun
Paragon could take options to emulate Hill Giants, Stone Giants, or even Ettin.

Recently it came to my attention that Brandes Stoddard did a 5th
edition D&D conversion of the mechanics of this supplement, and it took me
until I got home from work to pick it up and read through it.

Giants in
a Moderate Sized PDF

The 5th edition D&D version of this supplement is
16 pages, including an OGL page, a title page, and the front and back covers.
The front cover shows a frost giant about to clobber a rider on a horse, so I’m
all for that. Interior art is black and white with a sort of runic border.

Pre-Mechanical
Pages

There are about five pages of background material about the
Jotunnar included in this supplement. This covers some elements like appears,
age, and naming conventions, but also includes a history set in the Rite
Publishing setting of Questhaven.

It’s worth noting that many of the elements of giant philosophy
presented in this background material lines up well with the Ordening and the
concepts of Maug and Maat that govern the giants in the Forgotten Realms, so if
you are using the current default D&D setting, the background presented
doesn’t require a lot of manipulation to fit.

The
Mechanics of Giant-Kind

As with the Pathfinder version of the supplement, Jotunnar are
presented as a PC race. Unlike the Pathfinder version, there is no mention of
only going down the path of the Jotun Paragon or forever being one of the
Stunted.

The Jotunnar look to be around the same power level of Goliaths,
which seems to be a good judge of how powerful the race should be. They swap
out negating damage for a chance to reroll poor saves, and they exchange the
goliath’s athletic abilities for the ability to be more intimidating.

There is also an interesting sidebar that notes that the Jotun
Paragon class is only available to “giant related races.” That means that if
you happen to use races like Goliaths or Firbolgs, they should totally be able
to take this class as well. It is also mentioned that the restriction is only
for flavor purposes, so a human that is blessed by the giant gods might be able
to take the class as well, for example.

The point of all of this is that the Jotun Paragon class for 5th
edition D&D isn’t designed to be an “all or nothing” class, and is designed
to be balanced more against standard D&D classes, instead of bundling a
special set of rules together to form an alternate progression.

A Touch of
Class

The class itself almost feels like a monk without Ki, maybe? It
grants an alternate bonus to armor class, gives limited ability to do extra crushing
damage a few times per short rest, and creates a slam progression for the
character. The class also allows the character to eventually grow to Large size,
and then to Huge size, but they retain the ability to return to Medium size
when it is beneficial.

At 2nd level, the player must make a choice, not unlike
other D&D classes in 5th edition. In this case, the choice is
what Jotun lineage to follow. In this case, the choice is a more deliberate
choice to follow the progression of a specific giant race. Unlike the
Pathfinder version, that required the player to choose an element, and then
bundled giant traits under those elements, these paths are more tailored to the
specific giant race chosen.

My personal preference is for this version of the progression.
Instead of picking specific abilities (that might be further modified by feats
in the Pathfinder version), each path feels very thematic to the giant race
chosen. The Jotun Paragon gains abilities that don’t just feel like a fire
giant or a frost giant, for example. They feel like a paragon of fire giants or
frost giants. For example, Fire Giant Lineage Jotun Paragons can enhance
weapons in a forge, while frost giant paragons eventually gain freeze breath!

While the Jotun Paragon is getting more abilities, eventually,
than the base giant lineage might have, all the powers they gain are very
thematic for the fifth edition expression of those giants. In addition to the abilities
mentioned above, stone giants on the surface can sometimes ignore damage,
because the surface world is just a dream. Hill giants gain benefits from
eating their fallen foes. Cloud giants and storm giants get magical abilities
like creating illusory duplicates or (big shock) throwing lighting.

Giant sized weapons are handled in a special manner, just adding a
level based extra die of damage instead of scaling for large or huge weapons.

Given that 5th edition places less of an emphasis on the same rules
governing PCs and monsters, this seems to be a workable solution for limited
some of the potential issues with triple damage weapons in the hands of the
party.

Notable
Omissions

Compared to the Pathfinder version, the 5th edition
version of this product does not have the multiple pages of feats that modify
the Jotun Paragon’s abilities. Personally, I’m not especially turned off by
this streamlining.

More Maat

Looking over the Pathfinder version of the product and seeing this
conversion, this supplement captures what the concept was for the original
product, and presents it in a way that feels very consistent with previous
D&D 5th edition classes. That’s impressive, given that this is
such a different concept than most classes in the game. Not only do the class
features feel like 5th edition classes, they feel very much like the
giant types that are being emulated.

Maug?

It says so right in the title, but if you aren’t interested in
giants, the product doesn’t stray from its topic. Unless you are building an
NPC using PC rules, this is a very player focused product. While I think it
adheres to theme better with the class features, compared to the Pathfinder
version, the Jotun Paragon class is a bit less customizable, between the elemental options and
the extra feats that aren't converted.

Recommended--If the product fits in your broad area of gaming
interests, you are likely to be happy with this purchase.

This product is a solid, thematic supplement that allows for a
very specific thing. It creates a player option for running giant characters,
and if the campaign allows for that theme to be explored, this looks to do it
very well. That’s a specific niche, but at the same time, the product is worth looking
at just to see how such a specific concept can still follow the 5th
edition style so well.

Monday, November 13, 2017

There was a post, recently, in the Misdirected
Mark community about “Are Dark Elves Awesome or Lame?” I didn’t want to choke
that post with a ton of my opinions built up over the years, but I had a few, brought to the fore by this question.

For years, the idea was that the dark elves
were the bad ones, driven underground by the surface elves, then cursed by
Corellon because they were evil. None of this really applies to Eberron, and I
can’t really speak to their history in that setting. Depending on the
particular Greyhawk source, Corellon may not be mentioned as specifically
cursing the elves driven into the Underdark. Much of what follows comes from
Forgotten Realms lore, which is where most of the words published on dark elves
currently originate.

Problem
#1--Cursing with dark skin

I mean, that's just bad on its surface. I get
the feeling that this wasn't done with bad intentions, but you know, road to
Hell and all. Dark elves + literal interpretations = black skin. Backstory flavored
to support.

The contributing factor ends up being that in
the Realms, they tried to "fix" this by saying that the Illythiiri,
the elves that became the dark elves, were already dark skinned to begin with.
so Corellon didn't so much make them dark skinned, as make them even more dark
skinned.

Which means Corellon didn't make them dark
skinned, but the bad guys were already dark skinned, and Corellon made them more
so as a punishment. Oh, wow, that went off the tracks.

Possibly to mitigate this, wild elves, which
were distinct, at the time, from wood elves, were positioned as also being dark
skinned elves, so that the Illythiiri weren't the only dark-skinned elves, and
not all of the dark-skinned elves became evil. But then the only dark-skinned
elves represented are either the least technologically advanced, most tribal of
all of them, or the ones that became evil.

Final spin on skin color and elves--in the
Realms, moon elves have super pale skin with blue highlights, gold elves have
golden skin, and wood elves, or copper elves, have essentially darker skin with
copper highlights. However you may interpret this, the feeling was that elves
were intended to have more fantastical appearances than any art ever depicted them as having, at least in the Realms.

It wasn't really until the 5th edition Player's Handbook that we got to see
moon elves that looked how they were described. The old Forgotten Realms DC comics portrayed
Vartan with gold skin, but our first look at Drizzt on a book cover made him
appear to have dark brown skin, instead of literal black skin, which made him
appear to be black, in terms of human ethnicity.

Problem
#2--There are "some" good ones

People pointed towards Drizzt as being the
saving grace of drow and how they are portrayed in D&D. The problem is, the
narrative is that "most" of them are bad, but there is at least one
"good one," who happens to act like the surface cultures that
banished them in the first place.

That doesn't really make the narrative any
better.

While it was still a problem of numbers, when
Eilistraee was introduced into the Realms, there were then multiple small
groups of dark elves that were not evil in the Realms. They had communities
dotted here and there, in Undermountain and the High Forest, for example.

Unfortunately, a lot of gamers didn't like the
idea of a significant portion of the drow population being potentially good,
because it “ruined” them as villains. If they might turn good, after all, my
character might feel bad about killing them. Guilt free adventuring is best!

By the end of 3rd edition, Eilistraee was
killed off. Oddly, when 4th edition appeared, drow were a playable race right
out of the gate, and not assumed to be evil. That's a mixed signal to be
sending.

Problem
#3--The Matriarchy

It might not be a bad thing to have drow
society being both evil and a matriarchy, if most D&D settings had strongly
showcased any kind of matriarchy that wasn't evil. There are a few societies
scattered around where there are female leaders, but very few established
D&D matriarchies, outside of the drow.

While elves in the Realms, for example, have a
queen as their primary monarch, they still aren't portrayed as being a
matriarchy. In fact, the current queen followed the reign of a well-regarded
king of elves. A matriarchy, in dark elves, looks like another "negative
image" of elves, which makes it look like a matriarchy is a perversion of
what "should" be in elf society.

The Eilistraee situation compounds this
problem. While Eilistraee's followers might have shown that matriarchal dark
elves didn't need to be a perverse, evil development for a society, the problem
is that once we see a "working" model of their society in the novels,
beginning in the War of the Spider-Queen
novels, these "good" dark elves still tend to use males as pawns to
be sacrificed. In other words, you can't have a matriarchy where the females
make good decisions and care about everyone in the society. They still must
have a streak of misandry in their actions.

Problem
#4--Born evil

In Elaine Cunningham's Evermeet: Island of Elves novel, the idea is subtly introduced that
drow are partially demonic, because the leader of the Illythiiri and Lolth
herself, who became a demon lord when cast out of the elven pantheon, may have
had children. The line wasn't drawn that demonic blood damned them, but it was
used to explain drow special magical abilities and their affinity for being
able to summon and control fiends.

Years later, we got the Lady Penitent series. And things got more complicated, by trying to
make them less complicated. Turns out, Lolth's blood isn't what gave most dark
elves their demonic traits, it was a balor friend of hers that she used to help
her corrupted all the banished dark elves.

Not only does this introduce some uncomfortable
rape themes into the narrative, but it also means that the matriarchy of the
drow is partially reinforced by a male father figure that helped found the
race, which subtly reinforces the idea that the matriarchy is a perversion of
the natural order.

Eilistraee is also killed in the series, so we
can wipe the good drow matriarchies off the books.

Finally, the story explains that some drow in
the modern era are born without demonic taint, so they can be
"saved," but the ones with demonic taint still on their souls are
totally born evil and unredeemable, so have fun killing them and collecting
your XP. Guess which camp everyone’s favorite lavender-eyed protagonist was
born into? I guess his moral struggles aren’t really a sign of good character,
just a random accident of birth.

I feel as if this was being set up, as the
books appeared at the end of the 3.5 era of the Realms, to explain that PC dark
elves were the ones "not born evil," and NPC drow could remain 100%
"always evil." Thankfully, this was never explicitly stated in any of
the 4th edition material, and very little mention is made of the Lady Penitent series in current Realms
material.

Perception
Problems

Some of the issues in all of this come from
the conflicting desire of gamers. TSR wanted to create a narrative so that
there could be good dark elves, and not just the "one in a million" narrative
of Drizzt. They had Ed Greenwood create Eilistraee (see Drow of the Underdark, a 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons sourcebook), a goddess whose
followers could help account for a population of good drow in the setting.

R.A. Salvatore, having not created Eilistraee
and strangely writing a much more agnostic version of the setting than anyone
else working in the shared world, ignores this development. The "one good
one" narrative continued to be the primary narrative.

I’m not sure I can handle the cognitive load
of parsing all the ramifications of this, but in Salvatore’s more agnostic
Realms, this means that drow evil isn’t really influenced by an outside entity,
so much as the drow are so uniformly and collectively evil that they have
created a mass delusion that reinforces their notion of the universe and has a
degree of supernatural power because of that notion.

Gamers that don't particularly like Drizzt
start to see any good drow as an extension of that character's popularity, and
you have a massive divide between D&D fans that like drow as adversaries,
and R.A. Salvatore fans that like the "one good one" narrative, but
when playing D&D, want to be "the other good one."

So WOTC inherits the conflicting fan drives of
"Drizzt is great" and "Drow should always be villains." The
middle ground, that there may be some drow societies that aren't evil, but that
some, like Menzoberranzan, certainly are, is largely unexplored, and eventually
scrapped.

Mix in the ancillary problems, like D&D
art not portraying even human ethnic groups the way they

are described in the
books, and the image that casual or new fans have in their heads begins to
conflict with the image that some of the creators may have intended. This is
perhaps best underscored by Ed Greenwood's accounts of meeting with Hollywood
executives about live action Realms prospects, and being met with the
executives understanding that drow culture is "about hot black women who
are all dominatrixes." (Dig through the “So Sayeth Ed” archive at Candlekeep for the account)

The fifth edition D&D Player's Handbook
does a lot of good, inclusive things. I loved that the human ethnic groups came
across as varied, instead of the previous perception of "white people,
Chultans, and people from Kara-Tur." I was excited to see a gold dwarf
female in Xanathar's guide with brown skin, as they have always been described.

But drow--drow seem to still be caught in a complicated
web of problematic tropes and historical long shadows.

Sunday, November 5, 2017

Doctor Strange and Spider-Man Homecoming were enjoyable to
me, but both felt like they could have pushed things a bit further and had a
bit more substance.

I loved the actors in Doctor
Strange, but the plot felt safe. I loved the actors, especially Michael
Keaton, in Spider-Man Homecoming, but
felt like the reliance on tech and the painfully obvious avoidance of anything
that even hinted at his origin story ended up hurting the film for me.

Guardians of the Galaxy Volume
Two had some tremendous emotional impact, but I felt like the comedic beats
were all too close together. I don't know that it was more comedic than the
first movie, but it felt like the first movie did a better job of weaving drama
and action in between those comedic bits.

So, knowing my heretical views on the last few Marvel movies, I dearly,
dearly loved Thor--Ragnarok.

I won't give anything away, but the comedic pacing felt much more like
the first Guardians of the Galaxy to
me--it was present, and important to the film, but it never felt like it was
overwhelming the film at any point. A lot of the comedy came from
"real" moments of interactions between characters.

When it comes to Thor movies, I enjoyed the first movie. It was a
"safe" introduction to Thor and his world. Because this was still
early in the Marvel Cinematic universe timeline, they walked the line between
not scaling down Thor's power from the comics, but still making it more of a
"human level" story. They introduced Asgard and Thor's supporting
cast, but in a way that let them take a backseat to Thor talking to
"real" people on Earth, because the studio wasn't sure how much
"out there" Marvel cosmic weirdness an audience would bear.

Thor--The Dark World was a
disappointment to me. It felt like they tried to do the first movie's formula
again--having the focus of the movie be Thor interacting with mortals, on
earth. But it also seemed like there was a conscious decision to not cast
Asgard as the weird melting pot of magic and technology that they hint at in
the first movie, and recast most of the mythology of Thor's world as being
absolutely 100% space alien stuff.

Granted, the seeds of this were planted in Avengers, where we saw less
of Loki having blurry "sorcerous" powers, and more of him using alien
artifacts. But the biggest disappointment with this "aliens and tech"
realignment were the Dark Elves. There is nothing magical about them. Aside from
the pointy ears, they could be any nihilistic aliens. And Kurse, who had a
really interesting character arc in the Thor comics, is completely wasted in
that movie.

Its telling that one of my favorite characters from the first two Thor
movies was Cat Dennings' Darcy, who was created specifically for the movies.

Guardians of the Galaxy set
the tone that the "cosmic" side of Marvel is a weird, wild place. It
pushed boundaries, and took risks. Without the first Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor--Ragnarok
wouldn't have happened.

To get maximum usage out of Thor and the Thor comics contribution to
the Marvel Universe, you

should have a universe where blaster rifles,
starships, undead armies, giant wolves, and giants made of fire can all exist
in the same story, without anyone blinking. The Thor franchise has struggled
with the question of "should we be about mythology," "should we
be science fiction," "should we be epic"," "should we
tell personal stories," and the answer wasn't "pick which ones"
but "yes" to all of the above.

Thor--Ragnarok also manages
to weave in a few iconic scenes and themes from Thor storylines spanning the
years, without getting too lost in any of them.

When I heard that Taika Waititi disliked the previous Thor movies and
wanted a clean break and a radical new direction, I was worried that would mean
Thor would be moving further away from its source material. Instead of running
away, it feels like he loaded the movie up with some of the most over the top
moments and ran headlong into the heart of the craziest aspects of Thor's
storylines.

This is a clean break that doesn't ignore the past, but ties up a lot
of loose ends from the surface level treatment that came before, and ropes in a
wider array of Thor stories from decades of the character's history.

That's about as much as I can say, without getting into spoiler
territory, but Thor--Ragnarok is my
favorite Marvel movie in a while.